


Fire Alarms and Cookies

by bettycooperthefirst



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-09
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-20 11:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14259873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bettycooperthefirst/pseuds/bettycooperthefirst
Summary: Betty Cooper has a habit of stress baking, and Jughead Jones is tired of her setting of their buildings fire alarm in the middle of the night.





	Fire Alarms and Cookies

Betty Cooper was stressed out of her mind. Being a journalist in the biggest city in America wasn’t easy, as her mother had warned her just about a million times before she moved to New York. It meant new stories constantly popping up and overruling the last. And as a young 23 year old who had only been with the company for a year, she was still trying to get her footing among the hot shots who still only saw her as a kid. Today she had walked into the office with a great scoop, and as soon as she finished the article (an impressive 10 minutes later, ready for print), it had already been released by an opposing publication and an hour later, undermined by new evidence in the case.   
She was tired. Her feet hurt from the heels she chose to wear today- black and strappy and an inch taller than usual, but they were on sale and cute and she thought she could make it work.   
But after she ate her dinner, after she showered off the day, she didn’t sit back down. She didn’t lay down in her bed to sleep. She opened the small pantry in her New York apartment and did what she always did when she was stressed: she started to bake. 

***

The smoke alarm was going off. This was the 2nd time this week and the 5th time this month. Unfortunately, this seemed to always happen in the middle of the night. When Betty baked during the day, she was on her game, she didn’t let things like that happen. But once it got to be past midnight, mistakes were made.   
A loud pounding came from the door. Betty looked at the clock: 3 AM. She thought that if she personally heard a smoke alarm go off at 3 AM she’d probably just wait for it to stop, rollover and go back to sleep, no matter how irritated she was. But she knew exactly who was at her door. She had met him 3 nights ago when she burned her chocolate chip cookies. An angry boy about her age, jet black hair stuffed under a grey hat on his head, went by the name of Jughead. He had moved into the apartment across the hall from her about two months ago and anytime she saw him around the building he looked irritated. On the night in question, he had obviously just rolled out of bed to come yell at her. And yell at her he did. And of course she had handled it the way she had been taught to: all “I’m sorry for the disturbance Mr. Jones. There was this lovely recipe…” with a sweet smile and an offering of one of the less burnt cookies. 

But something was different tonight. Not only had Betty been unable to enjoy the singed cookies from her last stress-bake, she’d had to shower in cold water for the last two days due to terrible building management, lost the aforementioned story and broken her purse strap on the subway, sending all her personal belongings flying out onto the floor. The cherry on top was the guy two desks over at work asking her out for the 3rd time and telling her she was “an ugly prude anyway. I was just trying to be nice to you” upon her denial. As if she owed him something for being a nice enough guy. Which he apparently wasn’t anyway. It had been a long day on top of a long week, and as much as she knew it was her own fault that smoke alarm was going off, she also knew that it was clearly defective. The only time it had gone off when there was actually smoke was 3 nights ago. Every other time, she had no idea what it was doing and she’d been waiting almost six weeks for the super to come take a look at it. So she wasn’t in the mood for some angst ridden guy to tell her off and she sure wasn’t in the mood to take it politely. in fact, now would be a good time to unleash her anger. 

“Are you SERIOUS right now?” he started immediately after the door opened. “It’s three in the damn morning! What could possibly be so important that you need to be baking right now?”  
It was a bit hard to take him seriously, with that dumb beanie on his head.  
There was that same fire in his eyes, and she just knew that he was expecting the same response from her that he’d gotten the last time he was here, but she wasn’t feeling like following the Alice Cooper Handbook right now.  
She took a deep breath and responded.  
“Are YOU serious right now? It’s three in the damn morning! What could possibly be so important that you need to come and knock on my fucking door and tell me what to do?”  
His eyes widened, but she only continued. She was shorter than him and having to look up to yell at him only made her more angry. “Oh right, the smoke alarm. The same smoke alarm that I turned off within 10 seconds, therefore only causing you minor irritation through which any normal, sane adult would just go back to sleep. But not you. Of course not you. Not Jughead Jones.”  
“Whoa, slow down.” She could see the boys expression changing, but it was unclear to what. Could that be worry pulling his eyebrows together?   
“What?” She snapped.  
“Listen, I still think that you need to be more careful with your smoke detector but, I’ve seen you around here, in the hallway, at the mailroom, and you never seem upset. Or even remotely angry. Mr. Johanssen spit on you while he was talking the other day, a giant spit blob, and you literally smiled even bigger at him.”  
“And?”  
“And… I came over here because I’m always up at this time writing and the last few times your alarm went off it completely broke my focus so yeah, I was pissed, but now I’m honestly a bit concerned.”  
He was cute, she thought, if he would just be like calmer like this all the time. To be fair, it was 3 AM and she had just set off the fire alarm...  
“I’m sorry. It’s been a long week for me and when I get stressed out I like to bake. Sometimes I forget to keep track of time and my smoke alarm is defective. And by the way, Mr. Johanssen is the nicest old man I’ve ever met. I can’t let him know that he constantly salivates like that, it would only embarrass him.”   
His mouth twitched up for a millisecond but the concern in his eyes only deepened. “This has happened at least once a week for a month. Twice in the past 3 days. You’ve been stressed out that often?”  
“Um. I guess so.”  
He nodded. “When I get stressed I usually write.” He looked down at the floor. “What I’m trying to say is I get what you’re doing. I just don’t particularly love the sound of that alarm in my ears.”   
“Me neither. It’s really touchy in here. My carrot cake isn’t even burnt and there’s no visible smoke but it still went off all weee-oooo-weeee-ooo.”  
Betty could feel the time of night catching up with her mind and making her nonsensical, but Jughead smiled.   
He looked good when he smiled. And it didn’t seem like something he did particularly often.   
“Wait. You’re a writer?”  
“Kind of. I mean I try, but I don’t know if I’m any good.” He pushed his hands in his pockets and his cheeks seemed to redden.  
“I’m a writer too.” She offered. “Or. A journalist. Kind of. I usually just help to edit other peoples articles but I’m trying to be a writer.”  
His smile came back, even bigger this time.  
“I’m sure you’re already ten times better than all the other people in your office. They should probably promote you, I mean after all, you’re also a professional baker. Don’t sell yourself short.”

***

Two nights later, Betty was up again at 2 in the morning. This time she wasn’t baking. She was thinking about the boy who lived across the hall. Jughead Jones. The way he softened once they started an actual conversation. The flannel pajama pants and wrinkled grey t shirt. That smile. And she thought about how now that they had an understanding she might never talk to him again. She hadn’t before. And it didn’t bother her before. What had changed?  
Right then, the fire alarm went off, and Betty sat up quick on her couch. She naturally looked at the oven, but this time it wasn’t her. And it wasn’t stopping.  
Confused, she stepped out into her hallway.   
And there he was.   
“Betty.” He said.  
“Jughead... what’s going on?” She looked at the plate of burnt cookies in his hands.   
“I decided to try baking. Not as easy as it seems. Not a de-stresser for me personally, but to each their own.”   
“Okay...”  
“See, the thing is, you said your smoke detecter was touchy but apparently mine isn’t. I’ve been trying to set it off baking but I ended up just holding a lighter up to it.” His cheeks were getting red, she noticed, and for the first time he wasn’t wearing that stupid hat. Even though he did kind of make it work.  
“Why are you trying to set your fire alarm off?”  
“Well for one, I think it’s time that building management takes a look at the fire alarms in this building.” He took a cautious step forward.  
“But mostly, I needed an excuse to see you again. There’s something I needed to ask you.”  
She felt a flip in her chest and tried to keep her feelings under control.  
“Which is?”  
“Would you like to go out to dinner with me one of these days?”  
She let out a breath that she hadn’t realized she was holding. He was asking her on a date. He had made her cookies and tried to do a romantic gesture and no one had ever done anything like this for her before.  
“Or breakfast or something, I mean I don’t know your daily schedule.” The way he was starting to freak out made her realize that she was waiting much too long to answer him.  
“I’m actually more of a midnight snack kind of girl, if that’s alright with you.”  
She took a step closer to him and picked up a cookie off the tray. It actually didn’t look too bad. The edges were a little bit burnt but the rest of the cookie looked like just the right consistency. But Jughead seemed nervous.  
“The cookies were just a bit. You don’t actually have to eat them.”  
She gave him a confident smile. “Don’t sell yourself short.”


End file.
